Accidental Sire(60)

"What? A census report?"

"Yes, and I need you not to ask me any questions about it." I winced, waiting for my friend to blast me for putting her in an awkward position and asking too much of her.

"OK."

"Really?" I took the phone away from my face and gave it a skeptical brow lift.

"Yeah, it's not like you're asking me for names and social security numbers here, Meg. I've got to do this tonight anyway. You're just preventing me from procrastinating." I heard her clicking the keys on her desktop keyboard. "OK, we have one hundred eighty-three vampire students on the roster. And one hundred twenty-one human students." 

I wrote the number on my Post-it and glanced back at Tina's most recent report. Tina was padding both columns by about thirty students. "You're sure about that?"

"Nope, I just picked those numbers out of a hat. Because that's how I make my own fun."

"Fair enough, smartass."

"And my work here is done." I could practically hear Keagan raising her arms in a V of sarcastic victory.

"Can you do me a favor? Don't tell anyone that I called and asked about this?"

"Yes, I can do this very vague and mysterious thing you're asking me to do. Mostly because I don't think anyone will be all that interested."

"I'm serious, Keagan."

"I know. I can tell. Are you OK, Meg?"

"I'm sure it's just a problem with paperwork, but it's part of my job to track these things down, so . . ."

"Gross. Your job is even more boring than mine."

"That's the glamorous life of the vampire." I sighed. "So what's going on with you? I feel like we haven't talked much lately. And most of our conversations have boiled down to ‘Miss you so much . . . ah, I don't know what to talk about with you now because our lives are so separate.' "

"It's not that exciting around here-tests, classes, the usual. Nothing compared to dramatic death and vampire transformation scenes."

"So gimme the campus gossip not included in that care package. Which I did appreciate quite a bit, by the way."

"Uh, some girl freaked out at the haunted house fund-raiser and punched Carson in the nuts when he jumped out in front of her."

"Carson probably did something to deserve it," I said, remembering the time the handsy junior cornered me in the research library and tried to charge me a "hug tax" to get out of the stacks. I ended up knocking several volumes of Shakespeare analysis onto his feet to get past him.

"Probably," she reasoned. "Professor Greene walked out of a class in protest after some guy turned in a three-hundred-word PowerPoint presentation instead of the twenty-page research paper he was supposed to do. Oh, and you know that fire off campus? The fire department went through the rubble and found three bodies in the basement."

"Oh, no! Were they kids from school?"

"Not sure yet. Morgan is super-involved in the story for the school newspaper, so I'm getting so many details that I am having nightmares. The medical examiners haven't identified them. But the coroner told Joanie-you know, the hyper girl who covers the police blotter-that the bodies didn't have any ash or soot in their lungs, so they probably died before the fire. But that's not even the weird part. The bodies were chained to the wall! Like something out of some creepy Eli Roth movie."

"Ugh, that's awful." I shuddered but straightened in my chair when I saw Jane and Dick coming down the hall. "And I know this is a terrible moment to hang up on you, because you're clearly distressed that your roommate is sharing autopsy reports with you. But I have to go, because my boss is coming. I love you, buh-bye."


      ///
       
         
       
        

I dropped the receiver onto the cradle.

"Hey, Jane!" I said, smiling an "I wasn't just making a somewhat personal phone call on company time" smile. I handed her a stack of phone-message slips, which she accepted with a hesitant frown. "Hi, Dick."

Dick grinned at me and ruffled my hair, because he seemed to see me as some sort of vampire niece who would put up with this. I scowled at him, but that was short-lived when his "An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away, But Only If You Have Good Aim" T-shirt made me laugh.

"Is that Ophelia's progress report?" Jane asked, picking up the nuclear-red folder. She opened the file and scanned the papers inside.

"And this is where I bow out, because I'm not an impartial party when it comes to Ophelia." Dick excused himself, kissing Jane's cheek and ruffling my hair one more time before retreating to the break room.